Episode #107. Why Frontline Perspectives Matter in Healthcare, with Taylor Davis, founder and CEO of CareLuminate

Summary

Risk Never Sleeps Podcast Summary

Episode #107: Why Frontline Perspectives Matter in Healthcare

Host: Ed Gaudet, CEO and Founder of Censinet
Guest: Taylor Davis, Founder and CEO of CareLuminate
Release Date: November 21, 2024
Location: www.censinet.com

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Introduction

In Episode #107 of Risk Never Sleeps, Ed Gaudet welcomes Taylor Davis, the founder and CEO of CareLuminate, to discuss the critical role of frontline perspectives in enhancing patient safety within the healthcare sector. The episode delves into Taylor's journey, his insights on healthcare quality, and his vision for transforming the industry through authentic clinician feedback.

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Guest Background

Taylor Davis shares his extensive experience in healthcare, highlighting his two-decade tenure at Class Research where he led initiatives to benchmark clinician feedback on technology solutions. His passion for patient safety and authentic care delivery has been the driving force behind his transition to founding CareLuminate.

Notable Quote:

"I'm just trying to make sure that all of your products are safe."
— Taylor Davis (02:30)

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Origin and Mission of CareLuminate

CareLuminate emerged from Taylor's experiences at Class Research, where he observed discrepancies between frontline clinician feedback and official quality metrics. Determined to bridge this gap, CareLuminate seeks to capture genuine nurse and physician perspectives to provide a more accurate assessment of hospital care quality.

Taylor likens CareLuminate to having a trusted friend in a car mechanic shop who provides honest feedback, ensuring transparency and trustworthiness in healthcare evaluations.

Notable Quote:

"We're trying to replicate what clinicians already do. If you want to know where to go for care, you ask your clinical friends."
— Taylor Davis (04:00)

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Current Initiatives and Strategic Concerns

Taylor outlines his multifaceted role, juggling responsibilities at CareLuminate, Pivot Point Consulting, and Key Benefit Advisors (KBA). Each endeavor aims to address different facets of healthcare inefficiencies:

1. CareLuminate: Focuses on gathering frontline perspectives to inform care quality.
2. Pivot Point Consulting: Assists health systems in becoming high-performance organizations by optimizing operations and reinvesting resources into patient-centric initiatives.
3. Key Benefit Advisors (KBA): Challenges the unregulated financial practices of large healthcare carriers, advocating for transparency and direct-to-employer networks to eliminate middlemen and ensure funds directly support patient care.

Taylor emphasizes the systemic issues within healthcare, particularly the manipulation of quality metrics and the opaque financial structures that hinder genuine patient care improvements.

Notable Quote:

"Healthcare is a world of constant moral trade-offs and complications. We need the best people to help make those decisions."
— Taylor Davis (40:35)

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Personal Anecdotes and Inspirations

Taylor shares a poignant memory from his youth, witnessing a mother's gratitude for his father's pioneering work in cochlear implants. This experience instilled in him the importance of meaningful work that positively impacts lives.

He also discusses the challenges and rewards of entrepreneurship, describing it as an addictive journey akin to mountain climbing—difficult yet deeply fulfilling.

Notable Quote:

"Doing good while making a living is truly a blessing."
— Taylor Davis (12:48)

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Family Life and Personal Growth

Beyond his professional endeavors, Taylor highlights the profound impact of his family life. Married for over 20 years, Taylor and his wife Katie have four biological children and have adopted two boys with Down syndrome from China. This experience has reshaped his understanding of self-worth, emphasizing that inherent human value transcends personal talents and achievements.

Taylor reflects on the transformative power of unconditional love and the importance of personal growth through familial relationships.

Notable Quote:

"We are all worthy of love and important, regardless of our talents or capabilities."
— Taylor Davis (24:14)

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Advice to Graduates and Emerging Professionals

Taylor offers pragmatic advice to graduates aspiring to enter healthcare or related fields:

1. Challenge the Status Quo: Don't accept inefficiencies or unethical practices as the norm.
2. Maintain Moral Integrity: Continually question what the right thing to do is, striving to enhance patient care and system transparency.
3. Focus on Small Decisions: Emphasize consistent, positive actions that contribute to larger systemic improvements.

He underscores the necessity of moral clarity and active participation in reforming healthcare to prevent new generations from perpetuating existing problems.

Notable Quote:

"If you accept that early in your career, you may stop listening to that inner voice that helps you make the best decisions."
— Taylor Davis (38:53)

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Personal Interests and Hobbies

Taylor and Ed engage in a lighthearted conversation about their mutual love for music across various decades. Taylor reminisces about his favorite bands from the '80s and discusses how his children’s diverse musical tastes enrich their family experiences. This segment illustrates the balance Taylor maintains between his intense professional life and his vibrant personal life.

Notable Quote:

"Our road trip game with our kids is that we both take turns finding great songs that the other one has never heard."
— Taylor Davis (37:29)

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Conclusion

The episode concludes with Taylor emphasizing the importance of humanity in healthcare and the pivotal role of honest, frontline perspectives in driving meaningful change. Ed and Taylor underscore the ongoing need for vigilance and ethical decision-making to safeguard patient safety and enhance healthcare quality.

Final Notable Quote:

"What is the care part of healthcare without the humanity part of it?"
— Taylor Davis (41:09)

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Key Takeaways

• Frontline Perspectives: Genuine feedback from nurses and physicians is crucial for accurately assessing and improving healthcare quality.
• Systemic Reform: Addressing unregulated financial practices and enhancing transparency in healthcare can lead to more effective patient care.
• Personal Growth: Embracing challenges and maintaining moral integrity are essential for personal and professional development.
• Family and Humanity: Personal experiences and relationships play a significant role in shaping one's values and commitment to impactful work.

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Listen to Episode #107 on the Risk Never Sleeps podcast to gain deeper insights into improving patient safety and transforming healthcare through authentic frontline perspectives.

For more information and resources, visit www.censinet.com.

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Timestamp References

• 02:30: Taylor discusses the importance of safety in healthcare products.
• 04:00: Taylor elaborates on replicating clinician feedback for care quality.
• 12:48: Taylor reflects on meaningful work inspired by his father's legacy.
• 24:14: Taylor shares insights on family and personal growth.
• 38:53: Taylor advises on maintaining moral integrity in healthcare.
• 37:29: Taylor talks about family interactions through music.
• 41:09: Taylor emphasizes the necessity of humanity in healthcare.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to Risk Never Sleeps, where we meet and get to know the people delivering patient care and protecting patient safety. I'm your host, Ed Gaudet. Welcome to the Risk Never Sleeps podcast in which we learn about the people that are on the front lines delivering and protecting patient care. I'm Ed Gaudet, the host of our program, and today I am pleased to be joined by my good friend Taylor Davis, the CEO and founder of careluminate, among other things. So we got a lot to talk about. Welcome, Taylor.

[B]

It's great to be with you, Ed, and it's so good to see you again. When I was at class, we worked together and. And it's been too long, so I'm so grateful that you pulled me up for the. For the podcast here.

[A]

Awesome. Awesome. So we have a lot to cover. Let's just start off with tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and the current organization you're with in your role.

[B]

Yeah, that's great. Thank you, Ed. So I'm with several. I'm one of those add, always doing several things. My wife still teases me because when we had been Married for about five years, we're at about 20 now. But when we.

[A]

Congratulations.

[B]

Married for about five years, one Christmas, I just. I don't sit still very well. And one Christmas I said, I wonder if I could learn Spanish over the break. And I didn't. But she just. She just teases me. She's like, you're always trying to do something that you really actually can't do, and you're never okay just relaxing. So up until about a year and a half ago, I was with class. I had been with class research for almost 20 years and great organization. That was really a blessing. That was a wonderful place to. To start out your career. Founder of the class Arch Collaborative. That was such a neat experience. Helping some of the most premier healthcare organizations in the country benchmark the feedback of their clinicians about their technology find solutions. That was so much fun. Worked with Sentinet while I was there. I was president of class and trying to promote risk safety across all solutions is having a few good risk products doesn't actually mean that you're all the way safe, right? And how do you make sure that all of your products are safe? Anyway, I left class about a year and a half ago to start a company, Care Illuminate. The idea with Care Illuminate really came out of the Class Arts Collaborative, to tell you the truth. So here's the experience that I had edited. We would get perspectives from nurses and physicians surveys. We'd also come on site, we meet with them and at some hospitals we would see a prevalence of nurses and physicians telling us that their care was very poor. And it was always fascinating. It wasn't every hospital, it was just some of them. And then I'd go look at the quality metrics for some of those hospitals and at some of them their quality metrics looked really bad. And some of them, they looked really quite good. And so I talked to friends of mine and I'd say, hey, help me understand. Why would, why would a hospital where nurse after nurse and physician after physician say that their care is bad? I wouldn't say who it was, but I'd say, but why would they be a four star CMS hospital? And I learned from others just the manipulations that happen in the industry to manipulate quality measurements. And I this is funny, but I feel a little bit like an Upton Sinclair for healthcare. Let's, let's go bring the frontline perspective. And so the way that I think about care Illuminate and what we're doing there is if you had a friend who worked in an auto mechanic shop, if you didn't have that friend, you would bring your car in and you drop it off and you think, and if you're like me and you don't know that much about cars, you think they can just take me for whatever they want. Right. They could replace, I don't know about something. And do you know cars?

[A]

Cars, A carburetor or maybe they could, it's something small.

[B]

So they're gonna to do, they're gonna.

[A]

They can tell you that your fuel pump is broken or something.

[B]

Okay. So they're gonna do a fuel pump, but instead they're gonna do a fuel pump and the radiator and the carburetor, right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I'm never gonna know that it just needed the fuel pump. Right?

[A]

Happens all the time.

[B]

Yeah. And but if you have somebody on the inside, right, if you have somebody who works in that mechanic shop, they could tell you, oh yeah, we're a little shady here. If you really trusted them. Right. Or they could tell you what you always want, what you do want to hear, which is no, we actually, we do a good job. Like we're really quality that insight perspective if you can get to it. And so that's what we, that's what I started out wanting to do with care Illuminate to say can we get that inside perspective? And it's been fascinating. We went, this is a whole longer story but we went and said, can we get that from frontline nurses without the permission of the health systems? Can we go get those frontline perspectives? Will they be differentiating? Will they be true indicators of quality? We did it in five cities. We were able to interview over 1200 nurses. We have strong evidence that these are very good indicators of quality. And really we're replicating, we're democratizing what clinicians already do. If you want to know where to go for care, what facilities to go to and what physicians, that's our 2.0. Then you go ask your clinicians, your clinical friends and they'll tell you where to go. And that's what we're trying to replicate. So there's a long road on this. I'm doing some work with a couple other great organizations with Pivot Point Consulting and Key Benefit Advisors, the largest. And this is gonna, this is gonna be probably a decade plus type of effort with what we're doing with care. Illuminate, but completely committed to it.

[A]

Can you drive some regulatory change maybe through JCO or our goal CMS maybe?

[B]

I think shooting for regulatory changes is pretty tough. It's going to come. If it's going to come, right? Here's what we're wanting to do. And I'll just say this. We've both been in a lot of hospitals, we've both seen this a lot of times, right? Yeah. Let me give you a specific example. I'm not going to say who this is, but a friend of mine worked in a hospital and there was an OBGYN that had a 40% bowel perforation rate. So this means that you have 40% of these new mothers that are going home with colostomy bags. Possibly. They're probably not that high, but you have a sizable percentage of these women that are going home with colostomy bags. And this is a completely avoidable issue right now. Think about this for a second. The health system knows that this is happening. You know that they know that this is happening. And my friend tried to escalate and say this person should not be practicing here and was told he's a beloved member of the community. And the insurance networks know that this is happening. Right.

[A]

Because they have the data.

[B]

Yeah. And so you've got two organizations that should be protecting patients and that regularly don't. Right. Because they just get nervous about where to draw the line and angry people. And anyway, we're actually looking to, we're raising money right now. We're just, we're pre. Actually starting the round But. But we're looking to build a true care quality insurance network over the top of a new effort that's out there called Open Networks. And this would be a network that actually truly looks out for the quality of care of its members. And so that's part of the way that we're looking to drive change, is to drive it right from the employer side of healthcare so that you have quality is at the center of everything that you receive. So I love that more there. But I think that's. That's where we're going to try to create some real change and some real impact.

[A]

And have you brought in AI yet into this? Yeah.

[B]

I will say it is an amazing time to be an entrepreneur, isn't it? It's just absolutely incredible. I have subscriptions to both OpenAI and to Claude, and I probably spend two hours a day working with those. I do a lot of data work, and it's incredible. I can define my variables and I can say, give me the code. And it will create. It'll create HTML dashboard for me. And I really don't believe that I could be doing the work that I'm doing at cureluminate, which still has not been successful, but still it's been a lot of work.

[A]

Taylor, it takes so long. Nobody thinks, like, speed things up.

[B]

It's incredible.

[A]

It takes time. We've been at it for seven years and, and we've made progress, but it just. You get a pandemic in between and all these other things that are happening that are outside your control. The journey of the entrepreneur is so difficult.

[B]

You know, it's funny. It's. It's one of those things that you're addicted to. I saw a guy talk about he's a mountain climber and he climbed Kilimanjaro, and he talked about how hard and miserable it was, and then he's like, and I'm going to go do this mountain in like a month. And I was like, you have a mental problem. Like, you really, like, you have a. There. There is some sort of blockage here that you're doing this. It is the same thing with entrepreneurship. Like, you can't not do it. Like, you. You slip into it. You're just. Yeah. And so once you do it, you.

[A]

Get the bug, like you said. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Even when it's hard, you're just like, yeah, but there's nowhere else I'd rather be. Like, this is the hard that I want. And you just love it.

[A]

There's a great book by Ben Horowitz, who's part of the Andreessen Horowitz Venture fund. The Hard Thing about Hard Things, he wrote. And it's a great. It's a great book. It's. I read it every year because I always find things that I forget or I love.

[B]

The humans are meant to do hard things.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And there's another book that I really like called Flourish, and it talks about if you want. If you want a life of fulfillment.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

If. Sorry. If you want a happy life, focus on a life of fulfillment. If you shoot for a happy. Like, a fun life, you'll end up with an empty life.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

And so you shoot for a life that's full.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that's how you'd be happy. And I totally agree with this.

[A]

And I know you have a large family. I have three daughters, and my youngest just got her first job, and what a change. Just. And she's been working for the last week, and what a change. And just her whole demeanor, and she's. She's lit up, and she's planning for the future, and she's talking about buying a home, and it's just. But that purpose is so important in one's life. Yeah.

[B]

My oldest daughter just went off to college, and it's funny. I mean, she's going through all these challenges. Right. She's trying to. She's trying to figure out everything. And then you take a step back as a parent, you're like, yeah, she's actually right where I want her to be. Like, I. I was so blessed by every time that I worked through all of these challenges in my life, and. And I actually want those for my kids.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

But it's just hard to watch.

[A]

It's so hard to watch. It's so hard to watch. It's so hard to watch and disconnect from it.

[B]

It is. And let them. They're strong enough to make the mistakes.

[A]

Yeah. You've got to make the mistakes and get through it. How did you get into healthcare?

[B]

It's funny. And my father is a surgeon.

[A]

Oh, okay.

[B]

He's an ent. My grandfather's a pediatrician. Oh, wow.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So it goes deep in my family. When I was a kid, I was with a couple times. I was. One time was my birthday one time. I just happened to be with my dad, and he got called into the emergency department, and he said, you're coming with me. So I got to watch a couple surgeries. It was Idaho in the 80s and 90s. We were good with having kids come in and watch. Yeah. Anyway, I would go in and I would watch it. And there was something. I had one experience in particular that wasn't when I was watching a surgery, but was. And I still remember exactly where I was. I was in Albertsons. I was with my dad. We were back by the milk aisle and a lady came up and it was funny. I still remember being like, what the heck is going on? Because all of a sudden, she's caught. She's walking towards us and tears are streaming down her face.

[A]

Oh, no.

[B]

And she grabs my dad's hand in this kind of like tender, like. And you're like, this is weird, right? And she says, Dr. Davis, I can't tell you how grateful I am. And I don't remember the name of her son. And she says. She says, zach, just yesterday heard a bird for the first time. And I can't tell you what that means to me as a mother. And he had. My dad was one of the first ents in the west to be doing cochlear implants. And he had done a really early. So this is. This was revolutionary.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Care. Right. Anyway, she's close to sobbing. I don't think sobbing was. But she is blubbering.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

By the milk. Right. And I'm like a teenager, and I'm sitting here looking at this. And she just expresses this heartfelt gratitude. My dad smiles. And then they. I think he hugged her. And she walked away. And my dad turned to me and he said, taylor, you're smart enough to make a living. It won't be a problem for you. Making a living. What is truly a blessing is making a living and doing good while you do it.

[A]

Yes. Amen. And that's so true.

[B]

My life. It really so true. So I looked. Coming out of college, I'm a statistician. I've been a data guy. Right. I had a chance to actually go and work with on Wall Street. What was that?

[A]

Oh, like a hedge fund or. Oh, Lehman Brothers. Oh, wow.

[B]

They were recruiting me. Wow. And it's funny, they were saying, come work with us. We've been around since the Civil War. It's the most stable job. And the funny thing is that it was. Anyway, they really did that.

[A]

I remember that.

[B]

It was great. And so what they were advertising was definitely not real, but little did they know. So I could have gone and worked with Lehman Brothers or class were really the two options that I was looking at coming out of college. And I. And the. What my dad taught me, I have to say, put me on a path towards healthcare and I am. I will never leave healthcare. I feel so passionate about fixing this dang industry or at least doing the part that one person can do. So.

[A]

Yeah. No, it's so true. And that shared mission that you have, you don't get in any other industry. It just doesn't exist.

[B]

And I'm grateful for people in every other industries. And somebody almost feels selfish that I came into health care because I get to have that I get to care about what do people. I don't know, there's just that moment when the person that you love is naked under a sheet, as vulnerable as they've ever been in their entire life. It's one of the worst. They're in horrible pain.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And health care is just when you need it and you need it to be good. And we all need it.

[A]

We all need it. And we all have parents and friends and family. And that's why I do what we do. And I'm passionate about making sure that we remove any risk out of healthcare.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

Because if you can do that, then we got a better chance of delivering amazing outcomes and amazing care.

[B]

I think about what you're doing. I'm grateful that there's talented people like you and your team, I think a lot of your team and you. I'm grateful that there's talented people. It's just amazing. And it said to me, you have some people that spend so much. We've got enough entropy in this world with disease, with socioeconomic inequalities, with. With natural disasters like the hurricane today, with all these different things. We don't need to go create more with cyber events. It makes me sad that there's people who spend so much of their life just creating, just adding more entropy and disruption to a system that already, you know, has too much. But I'm grateful that it's too bad that we have to take talented people like you and your team and put them on fixing the problems created by other humans instead of just fixing the problems all of us humans face together. But we do need them. We need them, and we can't have these types of problems come at us. So anyway, yeah, I love that.

[A]

I love that. All right, let's get into you. Well, before we do. So you got a lot on your plate. You're spanning number of different roles. What, what are your top three strategic concerns or initiatives over the next couple of years?

[B]

You know it. So just personally, in terms of where I am, I'm. I feel really lucky. I'm working sort of three jobs right now, and I Love all three of them. So when I'm working with Care illuminate, that's going to be a long. It's going to be a long drive. And then I just keep chipping away at that. And you know what if I put a lot of my own money into this and not gotten paid for over a year working on it. And the funny thing is that I talked to my wife about it and I said, there's a real chance that we never get any of this money back and that nothing like this happens. I said, but I have worked really hard to try to make healthcare better. And I said, I always thought that I'd feel a lot of regret if I didn't have success with this. And I don't feel a bit of regret. I actually think I would go do it again. It's been one of the most meaningful, it's been transformative for me as a person. But the good news is that actually some things are happening right now that make me start to think this is really going to work. And I get really excited about that. So that's a blessing. I'm working with Pivot Point Consulting. I love what they're doing, health systems, in a way, and maybe this is too dramatic, but I think it's true in a lot of ways. We're at a little bit of a last stand here in healthcare. We've fallen down in some ways. There's so much rent seeking and opportunism and we have the most amazing clinicians and most amazing medical technologies and procedures in the world. And then we have patients over here that need it and the business in the middle is all messed up. And so in a way, I'm working with Pivot Point Consulting, whose tagline is make healthcare healthier. They're working as a coach to help these health systems become high performance organizations.

[A]

I love it.

[B]

We're having fun working with hospitals and saying, look, if you could, if you could transform in any way, what would it be? And in some ways we're a little bit grizzled in this industry and we say, well, we're working on this. No, no, not what you're working on today. If you could transform as a health system, what would it be? Oh, gosh, I think that we'd have this type of experience for our patients. I think we close care gaps in this way. And what Pivot Point is doing, I love it, Is that they're saying, well, let's not give up on these dreams. Let's work on this.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And let's look at your current operations. Let's figure out where you can throw off cash from those and then reinvest that cash and start doing the things that you've aspirationally wanted to do. So I love what Pivot Point is doing. I love working there. I also am working with an organization I deeply respect, Key Benefit Advisors. They're the largest truly independent tpa. And if you want to know why the business of healthcare is messed up, it's messed up because, and this is my personal opinion, it's messed up because large carriers are essentially unregulated financial organizations. They run money pipes that run from the providers of healthcare to the employers of healthcare that pay for it. And over the years, because they're completely unregulated, they founded ways and they've shrouded themselves in complexity. They found ways, they've got these money pipes running past them all day long and they've started to help themselves to the money and they're now helping themselves to the money to the tune of tens or hundreds of billions of dollars. And then we all pay for that in healthcare. So it sounds funny, but we really need good TPAs and good organizations that are highly trustworthy and KBA is the best. I love what they're doing. And they're also working with health systems to set up direct to employer networks in their communities so that you can cut out the middleman, so cut out the people running the pipes. Just, just make sure the money goes straight to the health system who's actually delivering the value. So those are three initiatives. I love all three of them. My life is full. I mean, What a blessing. 150 years ago you were lucky if you liked farming because that's what you were going to do. And now to be a guy who can work on three things that I feel passionate about, I feel, I feel blessed beyond belief.

[A]

And on the TPA side, you just ran a webinar, didn't you? That was.

[B]

Yeah, I just ran a webinar earlier this week. And so if you look at my LinkedIn, it's there, there's some huge changes coming to healthcare and healthcare doesn't know it because these carriers create a giant sound wall between the provider organizations and the employers who are actually paying it. And there's going to be some bottom up change where employers can be sued. Well, they can be now and the first lawsuits are going through where they can be sued by their employees if they're not managing the investment in. And if you go look at PBMs, if you go look at medical spread. If you go look at what's happening today, go look at some of the Lawsuits of Granger vs. Aetna and the Bricklayers vs. Blue Cross Blue Shield, and you can't walk away. Go look at the former Attorney General for New Jersey, Chris Deacon. Follow her. You go dig into some of these things. You can see that the graft and corruption of healthcare is so huge, and there's a lot of grounds for employees to sue their employers and say, look, you are signing up with known embezzlers for our health plan. Why were you doing that? You knew that this money was not going to go to the right place. And that was money that was supposed to be taken care of us in our families. It's going to change everything, Ed, and it's going to change the way that dollars are paid to health care. It's going to change. We're no longer going to think of big commercial payers. It's going to fractionalize. It's going to. It's going to break apart a lot of these carriers. There's huge changes coming to healthcare and a lot of provider organizations don't know it and. But if you've been on the employer side of health care, you see what's coming and it's fascinating.

[A]

So I love that. I love that and I love the reimagine the possible. These. All these things relate, interrelate too.

[B]

They do. That's what I just feel. So. I feel so lucky and blessed and I've been so blessed by healthcare. I hope I'm giving back and I think that many of us feel that way. And I've had a great career and I've done things that I care about, but gosh, some of the problems are so big. They're just so. They're just huge. And then you just keep thinking, give me a lever and I'll lift the world. You just keep looking for a longer lever, don't you? And every day is spent looking for the longest lever that you can to try to lift these problems. Right.

[A]

That's what makes it interesting. It is.

[B]

It is.

[A]

Outside of your day jobs, what are you most passionate about? What would you be doing if you weren't doing this?

[B]

Okay. And I'm going to have to give a disclaimer. You're going to. You're going to think that you and anybody who watches this is going to think I'm the weirdest person in the world. Okay. Just please respect my own kind of crazy as I describe where this is, but I I married somebody who I am just absolutely in love with, and my wife, Katie, and she is an artist. She is a school teacher. She's right now teaching school. And she just loves the craziness. She's actually really clean, which is shocking to me, that she is. But she just loves the craziness of kids. And it's her passion in life. It's what she loves more than anything else. And so she'll have. When our kids were little, she'd have all of our kids in the art room painting with paints. And I'd, like, walk in and think, like, oh, my gosh, there goes home value, right? And anyway, she just embraces that. And I really love kids, too. And so we have four kids biologically, and with the last one, she had some serious health complications, and we wanted to have a couple more. And anyway, it sounds like the craziest thing, but we actually adopted two boys who have down syndrome from China. And they are the greatest blessing to our family. So people will say, look at how you bless their lives. And I say sincerely, you have no idea. It is the exact opposite. And they have changed my life in ways I never expected. And you have some talents in life. You have other talents that you don't have. I'm 6. 6ft 7 inches tall. I've always wanted to be good at basketball. I've never been very good at basketball. I just don't have the fast switch, you know, And I guess I'm just not very fast on my feet. But I'll tell you, I'm really good at math. And I always thought that those talents were mine, that somehow I developed those talents. But all of a sudden, if you have a kid with special needs, you start looking at your talents. And so I always thought that I was a subtotal of my talents. If I had more talents, if I had more capabilities, I was more worthy of love. I was a better person. And then all of a sudden, you have a kid who is worthy of love no matter what, and their talents are so low. And. And then you start to look at yourself and you start to think, maybe I'm not. Maybe I'm not the sum of my talents. Maybe I'm just a human who's worthy of love no matter whether I'm good at things or not.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And it changes your life in an incredible way. So what started is just embracing the personality of my wife, who I love, and just her need to connect and to lift and to bring up the new generation. She just feels so passionate about it. It's just who she is. Meant accepting these two boys into our lives, and now they're them, and our kids are everything. I just went and did a. Did a run with the younger of the two, and it was a school race, and we ran around, and I'll tell you, he gave it his very best, and it was a lot less than the other students, and it was so inspiring to me. And I get those. I get that inspiration every single day. So that's a big part of my life.

[A]

Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, that is. Yeah, that's. That's amazing. I love that. Nothing crazy about that.

[B]

Why would you.

[A]

That's inspiring, Taylor. That's crazy.

[B]

People think, you know, it's. It's a funny thing. I. If I can give a little bit more to it, I'll tell a little bit about what we're doing. Yeah. We never did it to be inspiring. It was. And I say that sincerely. It was truly like. Anyway, it was quite the journey. We had our four kids, we felt like we had more kids, and one thing led to another. I know that's the stupidest way to describe a whole lot of things, but you just. You come to a place and it just stares you in the face, and you're like, this is like the thing I'm supposed to do.

[A]

I love it.

[B]

And. And then you didn't realize that it was the thing that you're supposed to do because you yourself needed to grow in that way. Right?

[A]

Yeah. No, And I think we're all on a journey, and I think like that, quite frankly, I certainly am. When I think you're inspiring in a way that some of the things I struggle with, you seem to have figured out so well.

[B]

I will just tell you. It's just go think about your life a little bit. And this is where it was. I still remember some of the days because our oldest son, who came to. To us and we adopted. At first, you don't love them. And I know that sounds funny, but they're. They're like interlopers in your life, right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then after several months of working with them, then you really start to love them. And at a certain point, you love them, you sacrifice more for them than you have anybody else.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then there's this. There was. For me, there was this uncomfortable year or two where I had to square up what was a hypocritical position, and I had to actually give up, and I had to stop believing that I was cool because of some of the things that I had done. Or learned or become in life. And that sounds like, scary. It almost sounds like you like, can't like, like yourself anymore, but it's actually the exact opposite. And as I talk to other parents who have kids with special needs, I hear a common refrain where they've gone through that too. And it's. It's not the nirvana of life, but it's really freeing. And it turns out that we're all human beings. And no matter what our talents and our capabilities and our mess ups are, it turns out that we are all worthy of love and that we're all important and that we belong here in life and that we should be respected. And we can change if we don't like where we are. It's not our talents, sometimes we can't change those. But we can become better humans. And as we become better humans, then.

[A]

That'S what it's all about.

[B]

It's elevation in our lives. It's a blessing. Right.

[A]

I'm going to throw another job on your plate. You ready?

[B]

Please, please.

[A]

You and Katie need to write a book. Seriously.

[B]

No. Here's the problem though. You gotta. It's funny though, because you gotta. I don't know. We moved four years ago into a neighborhood that we just love now. And I know this sounds funny, but it sounds like you move in and people are like, oh, you must think that you're like a saint or something. But then we would, we'd go to church with our local. A lot of the people around here in the same church. And it only takes one time for you to lose your patience and yell at your kid in front of the entire congregation. And then they're all like, oh, that's good. He's not actually that much of a saint. It's all good.

[A]

That's right. We all lose it, don't we?

[B]

Yeah. And then everybody's like, oh, yeah, he's messed up like the rest of us.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So the problem is that people think that you're a little precocious right out of the gate with, with doing something like that. But then you just see how, how messy life is for all of us. And then you go, okay, that's.

[A]

That's right. That's right. I think that's the energy behind the German word schadenfreude.

[B]

Right.

[A]

It's like, I don't want. I don't want the next person be better than me. I wish, I wish them ill just so I know they're human.

[B]

Yeah, that's exactly right. We. We did. So we had moved into our house. And this was the equivalent. This is my wife. And people meet her and think that she's an angel and she is, she's awesome. But we're all human. And anyway, a group of other ladies in the neighborhood had come over to visit and a particularly disgusting thing had happened at our house. And my wife Katie is in the next room. You can just hear it right as you walk into the house and she is yelling and screaming. We don't do these things. This is so gross. And the other kids have let this group of ladies like right into the house. They can like hear this all happening.

[A]

And as it's unfolding.

[B]

Yeah. So it's just.

[A]

See, that's a chapter in the book. I'm telling you. You got a lot.

[B]

Exactly right.

[A]

How many lives would you be able to touch with a book?

[B]

Right.

[A]

All right, so you can go back in time. What would you tell your 20 year old self?

[B]

It. It sounds funny, but. But I'd say just focus on the little decisions and the big ones take care of themselves. And I think there's so much to that. I look actually at my daughter who's almost 20, and I actually tell her that all the time. And I said, look, you don't have to worry about all the big decisions.

[A]

There's also overwhelmed.

[B]

What? Yeah, don't get overwhelmed. What am I going to do when I grow up? What am I. Yeah.

[A]

You know, I don't even know that, Taylor.

[B]

I don't even know that either. That's what entrepreneurs are constantly like. Well, I don't know. I think I'm going to try something else new.

[A]

Exactly. It's a journey of growing up.

[B]

Yeah. And they. Anyway, they always feel a little bit like imposters. Make it up. The new thing, right?

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

But if you focus on the little parts of your life, and I know it sounds funny, actually, I'm not very good at it, but like making your bed in the morning or just being kind to people. Just doing your best every single time, if you. And I'll say this, we both managed lots and lots of teams and people. Right. I'd rather somebody who follows through on what they do and that works hard. I don't care how smart they are, I don't care how savvy they are. For some positions I do. But there's always a place. I guess I'd say that there's always a place in an organization for somebody who shows up, who works hard and that's what the little decisions.

[A]

Attitude. Attitude is.

[B]

So. Attitude. And yeah, that's what. All the little decisions, that's what they shape. Right. And the other stuff falls into place. And sometimes life sucks and it's hard and you get setbacks, but if you work, if you just focus on the little things, it's good.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. A smart person with a bad attitude is often times worse.

[B]

Toxic. Well, actually, they're the worst. Because if they're really smart.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And they know how to affect way better.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

So, yeah, you gotta be. Yeah. Now.

[A]

All right. Risk Never Sleeps podcast. Have to ask you this question. What's the riskiest. What's the riskiest thing you've ever done?

[B]

Oh, I'll bring it back, actually. Without a doubt. Adopting our first boy. Right. I still remember sitting down on a plane from Hong Kong and this kid is in my lap, and I am thinking, I have just ruined my life. Right. This is. This was the stupidest thing I've ever done. I will say this, though. On the other side, I am. I have almost no fear of, like, lots of things, people. I have no social phobia, which is actually a little bit of a problem in life. There's not the same way.

[A]

I have no bubble. I'm the same.

[B]

Yeah, exactly.

[A]

I hug people out of the blue. It freaks people out.

[B]

It's not good. It's not. It's actually not good. But I will say I hate heights. And I'm 6ft 7 inches tall, so you would think that that should be, like some sort of oxymoron.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so if you talk about other risky behavior, it's like I've gone rock climbing and climbed up 40 or 50ft. And to a lot of people, that's like. To me, that's like the X Games of, like, doing a backflip in a semi while it's on fire. I'm just saying that's pretty extreme. So facing that fear is one. I hate flying. I do those things. But. So my risky looks a little different than other people. Risky in terms of. Most risky things involve heights. Right?

[A]

Yeah. No, that's good. You're stuck on a desert island. You could bring five records, albums or movies with you. What would they be?

[B]

Oh, yeah, movies. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

[A]

Oh, great movie. Oh, and soundtrack. Soundtrack spirit.

[B]

The soundtrack's fantastic, too. I. I guess you try to just go for the movie, then you get both. You get both.

[A]

That's good.

[B]

I like that with that. Yeah. But Space Odyssey by David Bowie, that's. Even if you could just only have the single. But it is in the movie. But you take that single, that's just. It's just fantastic. It's just one of the best ever, right? All I love. I know this sounds so funny, but being a kid of the 80s and 90s, I love the original Top Gun soundtrack. So that. Me too. It gets you going.

[A]

Good. It's so good.

[B]

Such a good.

[A]

I used to work out to it.

[B]

Oh, it is so good. Yes. That'd be my music for the montage where I would build the boat that would get me off the island and. Nice.

[A]

Yeah, that's good. Those are good picks.

[B]

And Yeah. I don't know what's something else to calm it down. What would you. What would, you know, I do. Here, here's another one. That's funny that my kids always. But this is for being a dad, so I don't know if I'm. If any of my kids are on the desert island, but this is the ultimate dad CD is Flood by they Might Be Giants.

[A]

Oh, yeah, that's good.

[B]

Yeah. It's the best dad songs. Right. You can get your kids singing. Anyway, so, you know, actually I'm going to take that back. Cake. I'll take the original. The. What's the name of their debut album?

[A]

The Long. Long Sweater. That one.

[B]

Long Short skirt, long jacket. Yeah, I'll take that. That's great.

[A]

Awesome. Actually, it's funny, I was. I was on LinkedIn earlier and do you know Esmond Kane? Ciso. Oh, he was at Stewart. He's.

[B]

No, I don't know. He just posted.

[A]

He posted something and he put a. I think it was a video of Public Image Limited.

[B]

You remember them?

[A]

Pill, you remember Johnny? Johnny. It brought me back. Saw them in the 80s and I was a huge Sex Pistol fan. I love this.

[B]

Oh, yeah, yeah. These things go deep. I don't know, maybe other generations have this. But I always look and you read books. You look at books like Armada and Ready Player One. You look at how deep this goes. And I heard somebody who was clearly a lot younger write, why is there all the focus on the 80s pop? And I was like, because it was the greatest. I'm sorry, there was just.

[A]

I'm very. I find myself very fortunate from a musical perspective because I was born in the 60s, late mid-60s. I'm not a child of the 60s, but.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

But my sister was and she was older than me, so I always had the 60s music coming in. I've got 60s, 70s, 80s. And I was focused on business in the 90s, so, yeah. Now starting to appreciate the 90s more. But those. The 80s is so good. Like Cure for the Cure and the Smiths and Kate Bush and.

[B]

Oh, my gosh, you. You. The. I. I will say this. I love watching my kids now because they have Spotify and they get to. They. They get decades of music, right? And so my son, he. He says he carpools with some friends to high school, and he says Mondays are 60s day, Tuesdays are 70s day. And then our 80s, 90s, and then 20s, right? Isn't it great that you can love? And yes, there's. You take the best music of every decade. You've got some great.

[A]

Oh, it's so great. Especially you're right. When your child and you hear your child humming Sitting on the Dock of the Bay by Otis Redding.

[B]

This son has his. One of his favorite songs. One of my favorite songs is Piano Man.

[A]

Oh.

[B]

And every word memorized. And it's just one of the greatest songs ever. And you just, like, feel this. Like, I didn't know if they would ever. Because. Because when I was a kid, liking what my mom and dad liked was just by Simon and Garfunkel, I was like, no, I don't. I'll pass. But now I love it. Right?

[A]

No, I love Cyber. Yeah, exactly.

[B]

But it was embarrassing because it wasn't in the now. And today's teenagers and the rising generation, they're not limited by that. It's not a factor. Like, it is embarrassing for us, right?

[A]

No, and it's great. And they also introduce new music to you, and you get to learn. You get like Noah Khan. I don't know if you know who Noah Khan is.

[B]

Yeah, I know. I know. Noah Khan. The September. Okay, hold up. What?

[A]

Stick season.

[B]

Your sixth season. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, that's a great. That's one of the greatest songs ever. It really is.

[A]

It's great. Yeah.

[B]

No, we. That. That's our road trip with my kids. Now we're just having fun. And that's my road trip game with our kids is that we both take turns finding great songs that the other one has never heard.

[A]

Oh, I love that. I love that. Better than Punch Buggy.

[B]

Oh, yeah. My daughter's a vocal performance major.

[A]

Oh, nice.

[B]

And so she's outclassed me because I.

[A]

Anyway, so they like country, too. They like Zach Bryan or that country.

[B]

I. I will say this. I was a big Garth Brooks fan.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then I. I feel like country has almost gotten political. I don't love. I don't love putting politics into music. I know that there's A place. I know that. I agree, I agree.

[A]

100. No, I agree, I agree.

[B]

But I'm just, I just want music, right?

[A]

I just want music that turns me off. I went to a Roger Waters concert and he was so political and I was just so turned off. But check out Zach Bryan.

[B]

I actually like Zach Brian.

[A]

Oh, Zach Ryan. Okay, okay. He's like a modern day.

[B]

I can't, I can't embrace the whole genre because there's this part.

[A]

I agree. He's great too. I tell my daughter, I'm like, he's a modern day Bob Dylan. Like he's your Bob Dylan.

[B]

And he's got the tonality.

[A]

Oh, he's so good.

[B]

He's a little bit like a. Not a James Taylor because James Taylor was just so much more chill. But the ability to sing in like, I don't know, like piercing a little bit, right? Yeah.

[A]

It's a little raw. It's a little like, it's like a little.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

I love it. All right, so last question. Any advice to graduates trying to break into healthcare or cyber or it or any of those?

[B]

Yes, without a doubt. Don't accept the crap that this is just how we've always done it. You gotta think every single time, is this actually how we should do things? If you are working in healthcare, and I'll say this, that I, I've said it to you before, I said in the webinar this week, I went over to the employer side of healthcare and there's corruption and issues on the provider side of healthcare. They are magnified over on the employer side of healthcare.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And actually sometimes you see people who are trying to be moral people and they run away from that. We actually need moral people to run towards it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But we need them to run towards it and then to make the best decisions that they can. We just, we need good people managing the money pipes of healthcare. We need good people working in cyber and good people working in decisions. Healthcare is a world and you also can't be on an. I don't know, it's a world of constant moral trade offs and complications and dilemmas. And that is if you do the only the moral thing as a hospital administrator and you say no matter what, we're going to have just the safest care. You run out of business, you always have to make some decisions, unfortunately, that are trade off decisions and it's hard and it's just the reality that we're faced with. We need the best people that we can to go and help make those decisions. And if you accept the bull crap, this is just how we do it, and you accept that early in your career, then you may stop listening to that inner voice that helps you try to make the best decisions, and then you won't be able to be that person that helps healthcare get better. Right.

[A]

Yeah. Do the right thing, and then you become what you railed against when you were younger. You end up becoming part of the.

[B]

Problem and at least keep agonizing about what the right thing is. Yeah, I guess I'd say because none of us, I don't think any of us just have this moral clarity where we just know. Right. What the right thing is. No, but the people that I really respect and that I've tried to pattern my career off of are people who are constantly wondering what is the right thing to do, and they think about it all the time and they make decisions based off of that. And if we stop doing that, then we've lost our humanity. And what is the care part of healthcare without the humanity part of.

[A]

It's like every other industry at that point.

[B]

Yeah, that's exactly right.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. Great, Great. Way to end, Taylor.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

Thank you for your time. This is Ed Gaudette from the Risk Never Sleeps podcast. And if you're on the front lines protecting patient safety and delivering patient care, remember to stay vigilant because Risk never sleeps. Thanks for listening to Risk Never Sleeps. For the show, notes, resources and more information and how to transform the protection of patient safety, Visit [e-mail] that's C E N E T.com I'm your host, Ed Gaudette. And until next time, stay vigilant because Risk never sleeps.